CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro said on Sunday that he is ready to normalize diplomatic relations between his country and the United States after breaking all ties with America in 2019.
Maduro made his claim in an interview with the left-wing propaganda network TeleSUR broadcast on Sunday evening — two days after a majority of Venezuelan “opposition” lawmakers voted to dissolve the nation’s legitimate interim government led by Juan Guaidó, which effectively leaves the rule of the Maduro regime in Venezuela uncontested.
“Venezuela is prepared, fully prepared, to give way to a process of normalization of diplomatic, consular, and political relations with this [the Biden Administration] government of the United States and with the governments that may come,” Maduro claimed during the interview.
“We are prepared for dialogue at the highest level, for relations of respect, and I wish a beam of light would come to the United States of America, they would turn the page and leave their extremist policy aside and come to more pragmatic policies with regard to Venezuela,” he continued.
#EnVivo 📹 | Entrevista Especial concedida por el Pdte. @NicolasMaduro al periodista e intelectual Ignacio Ramonet.https://t.co/UYvh2DkXy6
— Prensa Presidencial (@PresidencialVen) January 2, 2023
Maduro unilaterally decided to break all diplomatic ties with the United States in January 2019 and expelled the American diplomatic mission stationed in Venezuela after the United States recognized Juan Guaidó as the South American nation’s legitimate president.
Guaidó, who at the time was the president of the opposition-led National Assembly, had assumed the role of interim president in January 2019 according to the nation’s constitution as a result of Maduro’s refusal to step down at the end of his last legitimate presidential term, clinging to power through sham presidential elections held in 2018.
Venezuela’s interim government – which counted on the support of approximately 50 countries, including the United States, Canada, and the European Union – failed to remove Maduro from power and restore democracy in Venezuela almost four years since its establishment. After Guaidó briefly postponed the voting session, three of the four major “opposition” political parties that form the Unitary Platform of opposition parties voted on Friday in favor of dissolving Guaidó’s interim government.
As a result of the Maduro regime’s rupture of democratic order in Venezuela and his continued human rights violations, the United States, alongside other countries, has imposed sanctions on Maduro and members of his authoritarian regime including sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA oil company in 2019.
While the Biden administration continued recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate president, it also opted to send envoys to Caracas throughout 2022 to discuss possible oil sanctions reliefs. Those talks apparently resulted in a license granted to Chevron that allows the California-based company to pump and export Venezuelan oil for sale in U.S. markets.
According to a report published by Argus Media on Monday, Venezuela began to load its first U.S-bound crude oil shipment this week after the easing of oil sanctions.
In addition to oil sanctions relief, the Biden administration also granted other concessions to the Maduro regime throughout 2022. In October, the Biden administration, as part of a prisoner swap between the United States and Venezuela, granted clemency to Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, Maduro’s convicted drug-trafficking nephews more commonly known as the narcosobrinos (“narco-nephews”).
The socialist dictator’s nephews had been arrested in November 2015 by DEA authorities in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on charges of attempting to transport 800 kilograms of cocaine allegedly belonging to Colombia’s Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) terrorist organization into U.S. territory.
In addition to their release, the Biden Administration removed Carlos Erik Malpica Flores from the United States’ list of sanctioned individuals. Malpica Flores is another of Maduro’s nephews and the dictator’s former treasurer, who had been sanctioned by the Trump Administration in 2017 for allegedly being involved in the disappearance of $11 billion from PDVSA between 2004 and 2014.
The Biden administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has continuously granted legitimacy to the Maduro regime by insisting that the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan “opposition” resume talks towards celebrating “free and fair” presidential elections in 2024. Both sides had briefly resumed talks in Mexico in November 2022 — not reaching any elections-related consensus but rather signing an agreement that grants control of $3 billion of Venezuela’s frozen overseas bank account assets to the Maduro regime.
Despite the concessions granted, Maduro explicitly insisted that there will not be any “free and fair” elections in Venezuela unless all sanctions on his regime end.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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